The chance to think differently about Ecosystems for Innovation
Thinking about ecosystems certainly allows us to go out of our normal scope of invention, innovation and being creative.
The ability to tackle those larger societal problems within an ecosystem, or combine unique resources to overcome a complex challenge you are incapable of solving alone, does have greater potential in a collaborative adaptive system.
Ecosystem co-operations can allow you to align with others, totally outside your existing relationships, so you can enter new markets, explore new concepts and design, that would have been impossible as an individual organization.
Applying ecosystem thinking offers you the collaborative ability to extend beyond more traditional channels of delivery, or restricted to only utilizing your existing infrastructure. It allows you to search and build on others specialization that “greater” innovation.
We are all making greater connections within ourselves, as we find and connect, not just into our own “tribes” that all the different social platforms are providing, so as to establish our own personal identity. Crowdsourcing is another example that is offering huge potential to exploit new frontiers, as it can encourage us to forge, and connect, so as to serve and grow whole new communities from ‘simple’ beginning, building on real-time knowledge, collaborations and resolving challenges and problems we know are “out there” but we, alone, did not have the means to solve.
The future of collaborations can increasingly share previously idle or under-utilized assets, it can extend the life, it can extract that ideal knowledge, often locked in one organization. We are seeing the most valuable companies that are emerging today are largely based on sophisticated platform business models where ecosystems are vital to their health and global ambitions (Apple, Amazon, Car Manufacturers are all examples).
Ecosystems built around specific platform designs are the future of innovation that takes designs and solutions into a new realm of opportunity, built on collaborative engagement and common missions. As we learn we adapt, as we share we grow.
But be aware – the challenges are difficult to work through
Often designing an Ecosystem involves designing the architecture, platforms, construct new standards and be equipped to integrate and adapt different members of a community, who have something relevant to contribute. It takes a lot of hard work and a sense of identity from all involved. Managing this growing form of complexity is challenging old theories, boundaries, organizations and how they exist going forward. So much of the work involved is exploring the possible not ‘blindly’ taking other examples. Ecosystems are unique in design, relationships and the environment that surrounds them, they are personal too your design and need to solve . They survive and thrive due to that uniqueness and attraction.
Ecosystem innovation today is more about managing beyond the immediate known’s found within one organization’s limited focus of the world. The race is to gain advantage and often try to dominate and influence the future direction a market will take. This requires a broader perspective, a greater diversity of thinking by tapping into varying levels of specialized expertise. For innovation, you need to extend your view, push the boundaries and make sure you can connect up all the parts for it to grow and develop.
Regretfully we are not yet fully equipped to manage these new innovation ecosystems. We need to think through a better emerging theory of leading or good practice. We need to advance the measurement and impact that ecosystems will have within advancing our innovation activity. This is the exciting part, building, and learning, evolving a design of an ecosystem has a real potential to ‘create’ something different that has the potential to transform a germ of an idea into something living, breathing and valued, a set of tangible innovative outcomes.
